The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence.

People exercise an unconscious selection in being influenced.

Poetry should help, not only to refine the language of the time, but to prevent it from changing too rapidly.

The "greatness" of literature cannot be determined solely by literary standards though we must remember that whether it is literature or not can be determined only by literary standards.

Love compels cruelty To those who do not understand love.

Men live by forgetting-women live on memories.

The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.

I grow old ... I grow old ... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Maturing as a poet means maturing as the whole man, experiencing new emotions appropriate to one's age, and with the same intensity as the emotions of youth.

The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all.